Giant prehistoric 'unicorns' once wandered over the prairies of Central Asia. New research has shown that these so-called Siberian unicorns lived much longer than was believed, and probably did not become extinct until 'just' 39,000 years ago. Publication in Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Scientists remain puzzled by the sudden extinction of Neanderthals, some 40,000 years ago. New research by scientists from Eindhoven University of Technology, Leiden University and Wageningen University now suggests we might have been too quick in attributing the demise of Neanderthals to invasions…

Population growth, economic expansion and the associated land use caused an increase in the number of bird species facing extinction and a reduction in carbon storage worldwide. These are the findings of an international team of scientists, also from the Leiden University Institute of Environmental…

Scientists have long assumed Neanderthals simply lost the evolutionary race against humans. But their disappearance may be a bit more complex. In Discover Magazine, Gerrit Dusseldorp sheds light on this illusive question.

This project has two main aims: I. Determine when novelty promotes fear extinction. II. Discover the neurobiological mechanisms underlying these effects.

Although exposure therapy is the gold-standard treatment of posttraumatic stress-disorder (PTSD), only half of the patients adequately benefit from it. Based on recent insights into the mechanisms of extinction, this project examines strategies and techniques to improve exposure treatment outcome in…

Promotor: Prof.dr. A.G.G.M. Tielens, Co-Promotor: J.B.R. Oonk

In this thesis, we present new laboratory data of interstellar dust analogues.

Towards a Biological Understanding of the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic Transition

This project aims at describing the Khoisan languages !Ora (Korana/Griqua) and !Ui of South Africa.

Lecture

On May 13 2022, Frans W. Saris will present the third of a series of "Hello World!" lectures, organised by the Media Technology MSc program of Leiden University. In his lecture titled "Computer Modeling to Save the World", Frans Saris addresses three alarming crises: energy and climate, biodiversity…

Lecture

Can excessive worrying be reduced via stimulation of the vagus nerve?

At the annual meeting of the postgraduate school for Experimental Psychopathology (April 6th), Andreas Burger was awarded the article prize for best academic paper of 2017.

This dissertation presents a comprehensive description of Xinka, an indigenous language from southeastern Guatemala. The description is based on a missionary grammar that is titled Arte de la lengua szinca and was written by the priest Manuel Maldonado de Matos around 1773.

On the 12th of May, Rita Barrera Virhuez-Eloranta successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Rita Barrera Virhuez-Eloranta on this achievement.

Promotor: F.P. Israel, Co-Promoter: R. Meijerink

This book concerns cultural production in contemporary Latin American cities: chaotic cities where the ideal of order has become fragmented and the walls of the lettered city have become porous. New and multifarious urban trajectories—intersecting, colliding, superimposing—trace the image of the postmodern…

The world we live in is changing in many aspects at an ever-increasing speed. And it will continue to do so. How do we anticipate these changes, such as the increase in atmospheric CO2, the extinction of species and industrialisation?

And its application in deciphering hominin diets in palaeolithic eurasia

As museums face more scrutiny and are being demanded to decolonize, there are opportunities for Dominican museums to adopt a critical perspective and turn their collections and exhibitions into connections to our cultural past, present, and future.

N-acylethanolamines (NAEs), which include the endocannabinoid anandamide, represent an important family of signaling lipids in the brain. The lack of chemical probes that modulate NAE biosynthesis in living systems hamper the understanding of the biological role of these lipids.

Reworking Culture: Relatedness, Rites, and Resources in Garo Hills, North-East India provides intimate insights into the lives of hill farmers and the challenges they face in day-to-day life. Focusing on the ongoing reinterpretation of traditions, or customs, the book critiques the all too often taken-for-granted…

The Human Origins group at Leiden University studies the archaeology of hunter-gatherers, from the earliest stone tools in East Africa, more than three million years old, to the origin of sedentary societies towards the end of the last ice age.

Insights in diet, climate and ecology

On the 13th of April, Federico Dragoni successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Federico on this achievement!

One of the most crucial aspects of our behaviour is our motivation to explore novel environments and interact with new people. This became painfully clear during the COVID-19 lockdowns, when many people suffered from lack of new experiences and real-life social interactions. The relevance of novelty…

This thesis describes the development and validation of new high-contrast imaging techniques, with the ultimate goal of enabling the next generation of instruments for ELT-class telescopes to directly image Earth-like extra-solar planets orbiting around nearby stars.

In populations with a seed-bank, individuals can temporarily become dormant and refrain from reproduction until they can become active again. The repository of all dormant individuals in the population is called the seed-bank. Seed-banks are observed in many taxa, including plants, bacteria and other…

In this work, we investigate the minute circular dichroism effects of single nanoparticles.To this aim, we apply photothermal imaging with a polarization-modulated heating beam.

Nowadays, most Europeans speak a language belonging to the Indo-European language family. However, very different languages were spoken on our continent before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans. The EUROLITHIC project tries to find answers to the question which languages these were and where they came…

An integrated geo-archaeological research of the hominin site Trinil on Java

Can a newly developed, app-based, personalized maintenance program enhance the effectiveness of the exposure-based one-session-treatment for children with a specific phobia?

At the Faculty of Archaeology, we investigate the development of human societies worldwide, from the earliest beginnings to modern times. We also study the heritage of mankind, which evokes this deep history, and which connects with, and informs, contemporary society.

About 90 per cent of Austronesian and Papuan languages are under threat of soon becoming extinct. Marian Klamer is the only professor in the world who researches both these language groups. She records languages before they disappear and sheds new light on the history of Indonesia. Inaugural lecture…

The main purpose of this book is to give a description of the Cholón language as represented in the Arte de la lengua cholona (ALC), a colonial grammar written in 1748 by a Franciscan friar, named Pedro de la Mata. The ALC was transcribed by Fray Gerónimo Clota in 1772. This grammar is kept in the British…

What can languages spoken in the Lesser Sunda Islands today tell us about the histories of its various population groups?

Radiation can be used to determine the isotope ratio of a skeleton. This provides information about where our ancestors lived and what they consumed. Dr Andrea Waters has developed a revolutionary method that can trace patterns of consumption from tens of thousands of years ago.

There are over 7,000 languages in the world and over half of the world’s population is bilingual. But how do all these people use their language? And how do these languages differ from one another? Under the slogan of ‘Interconnecting linguistic diversity,’ the researchers from the Leiden University…

A fragment of a human skull discovered in sediments extracted from the bottom of the North Sea, 15 km off the coast off the Netherlands, has been identified as belonging to the extinct Neandertal group.

For the first time in the history of the Van den Berg prize, there are two winners: the ‘traditional’ one for the best thesis by a student in the Dutch bachelor’s programmes in Political Science, and, as of 2020, one for a graduate from the International Relations and Organisations (IRO) specialisation.…

Leiden archaeologists have identified a number of bone fragments that were excavated in Germany two years ago. The fragments are from a sabre-toothed cat and appear to be parts of the skull of a prehistoric feline that is over 300,000 years old.

Jan Erk, political scientist at Leiden University, has been selected as the 2016-2017 Smuts Memorial Fellow at the University of Cambridge. During his residency at the renowned British academy, he will work on his research project ‘The Enduring Impact of Africa’s extinct kingdoms and invisible chief…

Extinct hominin DNA extracted from >40,000 years old sediment

Marian Klamer's LAISEANG project has been awarded a research grant by CLARIN.

Do Ethiopian wolves change their diet and foraging strategy in the landscape under different land uses? How land use affect Afro-alpine rodent Communities? How important are Afro-alpine natural resources utilisation for local livelihoods? What is the human perception of conflict in the Afro-alpine a…

This project sets out to map, document and analyze instances of squatting in Leiden from 1970 to 1990, in order to set up an online Digital Archive of Squatting in Leiden. This archive will function as an online resource for academic research, as well as a starting point for public activities such as…

The Winter Academy is also offering longer courses from alumni. Three of these work on building skills: in data science, in written expression, and in activism. The fourth gives students a legal perspective on the housing crisis in the Netherlands.

A linguistic reconstruction of the migration of the Tocharians from Europe to China